Ohio counties could switch voting equipment

Saturday

Dec 29, 2007 at 12:01 AMDec 29, 2007 at 4:30 AM

Stark and 58 other Ohio counties would be forced to get rid of their two-year-old touch-screen voting equipment if lawmakers adopt Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s plan to switch to central count optical scan ballots.

Tim Botos

Who among us hasn’t been here before?

You just spent $3.9 million in federal tax dollars to buy a new voting system, only to find it may have to be junked. Then you’ll spend more money to buy a different voting setup -- one you didn’t want in the first place.

OK, maybe you never made such an expensive boo-boo.

Stark and 58 other Ohio counties would be forced to get rid of their two-year-old touch-screen voting equipment if lawmakers adopt Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s plan to switch to central count optical scan ballots.

“This whole issue of voting machines ... will be a work in progress,” said Stark County Board of Elections member Johnnie Maier.

Two weeks ago, Brunner released her Project EVEREST report. That stands for Evaluation and Validation of Election Related Equipment. In short, it’s a risk assessment of voting equipment in Ohio. Votes in the state’s 88 counties are cast on five kinds of machines made by three different companies.

What equipment isn’t secure?

Which machines can be hacked?

Could an election be sabotaged?

“None of the systems ... were found to be completely secure,” said Jeff Matthews, director of Stark’s elections board and a member of the bi-partisan advisory committee that worked on EVEREST. The key though, Matthews said, is the people factor.

“When you’re given unfettered access to any system, you can compromise it,” he said.

That, he said, is why there is a host of election-tampering and fraud laws, many of which are felonies. It’s why local boards of elections are controlled equally by Republicans and Democrats. It’s why access to the election computer server in Stark County is limited to only four people, and why there’s a split password for entry. Republicans know half the password; Democrats the other half.

The EVEREST report contains other recommendations, including a push for vote centers instead of smallish precincts, opening polling centers for 15 days instead of on one election day and holding special elections through mail-only voting.

Most suggestions would cost more money.

The most expensive is switching the entire state to central count optical scan machines, basically color-in-the-oval ballots similar to standardized school tests. In fact, Brunner mandated them for Cuyahoga County by breaking a tie vote by that local elections board this month.

The pricetag, or who would pay for the equipment statewide, remains unclear.

Oddly, the ES & S-made machine Brunner selected for Cuyahoga was found to be flawed this month by Colorado’s secretary of state. That state refused to certify those machines for their elections.

Currently, no Ohio county uses central count optical scan, though some use precinct count optical scan ballots. Brunner wants a central count system to alleviate tampering risks in the field.

Although superior in accuracy to punch cards, optical scans are not generally as accurate as touch-screen models. They also aren’t as effective in eliminating mistaken over- or under-voting, which occurs when a voter forgets to vote in a particular race or mistakenly votes for two candidates instead of one.

Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor and expert on the state’s elections law, is critical of EVEREST in his blog:

“In the end, the EVEREST report doesn’t make a convincing case for Ohio’s scrapping its existing technology -- particularly for 2008, a timetable that would wreak havoc on local election officials and, ultimately, inure to the detriment of voters ... there’s a wide gulf between EVEREST’s findings, which warrant careful attention, and its recommendations, which aren’t supported by the evidence and have a seat-of-the-pants feel to them.”

Stark elections board member Curt Braden questioned the validity of all election equipment testing. “I’m not so sure that everyone is interpreting the results the same,” he said. “At this point, I don’t think there is a decision for us to make. We have confidence in the system we are using.”

The abbreviated version: 1. Stark chose to buy touch-screens. 2. Stark was forced to choose optical scan machines instead, at the direction of former secretary of state Ken Blackwell. 3. Stark and other counties ultimately were allowed to select approved machines of their choice -- they picked touch-screens, again.

Using federal Help America Vote Act money, Stark spent $3.9 million on 1,443 machines. Punch-card ballots -- used since 1976 -- were replaced by touch-screens for the November 2005 election.

Stark elections board member William Cline said the greater need is poll worker training and education, not different machines. “If the state legislature is thinking of throwing money (at elections), it’s where the rubber meets the road,” he said.

And while local election officials remain in limbo, they aren’t spending any more money to update the touch-screen system.

Stark County had considered buying as many as 364 Diebold ExpressPoll-5000 devices, at about $2,000 a apiece, one for every precinct, in an attempt to make voting simpler and quicker.

The accessories would eliminate the need for the cumbersome bound poll books that poll workers use to verify signatures.

The names of all registered voters can be programmed into the machine. For voters, that means they could simply type in their name to ensure they are in the correct voting location (a habitual problem), sign the keypad, then leave the station with a properly programmed card that can be inserted into a voting machine.